


Doubtful (Dreams of Dreams)

by SofterSoftest



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: AU to an AU, F/M, GET IT, I am open to discussing it as ever, I got an anon forever ago asking me to write this, I know its not what you wanted, an au threat made real kind of in a different au, anyway, but its what felt true to me so, could be read as a stand alone probably, just take this before I decide to stop working on it, like a dream of a dream, so here it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofterSoftest/pseuds/SofterSoftest
Summary: Olaf breaks into the Baudelaire mansion, intent to burn it down. Inside, he finds Violet sick and weak with fever. // An AU to Whatever Gods May Be.
Relationships: Violet Baudelaire/Count Olaf
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	Doubtful (Dreams of Dreams)

_ “Here, where the world is quiet. _

_ Here, where all trouble seems _

_ dead winds' and spent waves' riot _

_ in doubtful dreams of dreams.” _

_ The Garden of Proserpine,  _ AC Swinburn

  
  


*

It is a search for brutality that compels him to Violet’s bedroom. 

Skulking throughout the grand Baudelaire mansion, taking in the sights with bitter familiarity, Olaf toys with the lighter in his hand and wonders aloud where first to set the fire. He mumbles to himself as he paces, not wanting to linger. Even the smallest details cause him pain - the coats on the rack, the shoes by the door, the warmth, the very taste to the air. 

Olaf wanted out of the mansion as soon as he slipped inside. Still, he compels himself onward, deeper into the house, searching for its weakest points as he itches with violence. 

It could not be just any room where the fire starts, after all. Not any barren bedroom swamped with chemicals, or speck of furniture flooded with gasoline. To make up for lost time, it must be intimate, personal, and as malicious as possible.

His only problem is that he does not know where to start.

Olaf thinks of the library, as he stomps in raving circles throughout the bottom level of the home. He imagines tipping their old yearbooks to the floor and starting with those. Though, the more he considers this, the more he doubts they would be out in the open. Probably tucked away in a trunk with every other shred of Beatrice’s identity as a volunteer. He tries to imagine the subjects of other books that clutter the shelves of her home library. Baticeering, or mothering, or something similarly useless. Unbidden, an image rises in his mind as he wanders - a bulky red book, worn at every edge, always nearby.  _ A History of the Opera _ .

Remembering it sends him tumbling backwards in time, skipping through decades as he ducks between dim rooms. He recalls one night, both of them mildly drunk, roaming brick-paved streets at midnight. They had just finished an assignment that had weakened them in some brutal way, and they were left leaning on one another in the aftermath, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking of anything important. Beatrice was blathering about a performance she hoped to star in, a note she hoped to hit, a swooning associate she hoped to write. Olaf had hardly listened, too focused on putting one foot before the other, yet he remembers the pressure of her head on his shoulder, her cold hand in his jacket pocket, and the spin of the stars as he glanced skyward. That battered red book had been tucked under her arm that whole night, and almost always since.

He knows Beatrice as she truly is. He recognizes her two faces in spiteful detail. He knows her elitism, her vanity. He had loved her for it at the time, mostly. He knows the good and the bad, and he knows that her books could be replaced no matter how beloved. He needs another target.

The home passes him by, blurry. Looking too long forces him to recall fond times with Beatrice, dozens of memories he could summon on reflex, without any effort. (A dorm room, an empty stage, a back alley, a bar, a getaway car - ) And Olaf is not here for reflection or nostalgia or commemoration of the past. He is here for revenge.

A portrait draws him to the staircase, stilling his pacing.

It hangs on the back wall of the landing, nearly as tall as him. The frame is intricate and golden, glimmering even in the dim. When he sparks his lighter in agitation, the light catches, reflecting like premonition. All five Baudelaire's sit straight-backed and happy, clustered close together like a postcard scene. Bertrand, tallest, takes up the back, his dark hair gelled, his eyes happy and blazing with contentment, though there is still a frustrating roguishness to his smile that makes Olaf’s skin prickle in long-suffered irritation. Beatrice sits to his side in a pale blue dress that dips low across her shoulders, her hair longer than he has ever seen it. One look at her face makes him glance away on principle, teeth bared and jaw locked. 

He will not acknowledge her in such a happy scene until he has taken it all away.

His eyes skitter. They land atop the face of the eldest Baudelaire - her smile is angelic, sweet, and still as death. In his peripheral, he can see her two siblings at her sides, unimportant smears of paint and color, yet it is her face that strikes him. Like a saint, it is full of love and care and devotion, even as she stares forward into nothingness, into him. 

Seeing her sitting so near Beatrice nearly makes him cackle. He wonders if Beatrice ever looked upon her daughter with jealousy or regret. Olaf asks the portrait, voice rough and lilting, “Oh, B. Does all that purity feel like an insult?”

Beatrice, of course, gives him no answer. Yet, watching her, his eyes sink past the portrait. Past the rising steps and the carved balusters and yet another landing to where light spills from a cracked door. Noticing it, Olaf freezes as if he has been caught. Then, very distantly, comes the agitated ruffling of bedclothes.

Heart in his throat, Olaf takes the stairs two at a time.

Through the gap, he sees a bedroom untidy with books and scraps of metal and large sketches that flutter from pins in the walls. Despite the open window and the eager breeze, the room is stuffy with heat and the strange humidity that comes only with proximity to the very sick.

He enters the room quietly, cautiously, and instantly his eyes snag on the bed. The very same girl from the portrait lies slumped atop it, her long hair tangled across her pillows, her pretty face pinched and pale save for her cheeks, which blaze red. She wears a pristine pair of pajamas, white as salvation with red pinstripes and a little red heart stitched over the pocket. Every blanket and stray pillow has been kicked to the floor.

Olaf approaches slowly, quietly, irrationally afraid she might vanish. Only once he gets close enough to touch does he see that she is shivering. Her eyes are spinning, half-lidded, half-dreaming. 

She is very obviously sick. And, Olaf thinks, from the pallor of her, it must be rather extreme. He sinks to his knees beside her bed, watching her eyes roll in her head, and does not debate calling for help. Instead, he admires her complexion, flushed pink and pearly, dewy with sweat. He admires the exhausted slump of her. Admires her helplessness.

Gentle, he brushes her bangs from her brow, which are damp and softly curling. She flinches, hisses, yet her eyes hardly open. Disturbed by the heat of her skin, he lays his hand flat on her head. Her little fingers twist in the mattress cover. 

“You poor thing. Poor, poor…” He takes a quick glance to a sketch on the wall, and a tidy signature in its bottom corner. “ _ Violet… _ I know how to make you feel all better.”

His hands trail down her cheek to her throat, firm with wanting. At the touch, Violet’s eyes part wider, dark and hardly seeing. With every button he picks loose, her eyes open slightly until she is peering at him with a relief that does not fully seem to register. When her top is fully unbuttoned, he parts it with the same maddening gentleness, letting it fall to either side of her. When the open air hits her skin, Violet sighs with mercy. Meanwhile, his eyes on her are heavy with heat. Only topless does he fully see how small she is - tiny ribcage, tiny breasts, tiny bones like a bird. She is so small he feels he could crush her by accident. Olaf’s fingertips skim her navel, intent on undressing her further, but Violet’s halt him. Her clammy fingers wrap weakly around his wrist.

“Cold,” she chatters. Even wrecked with fever, her voice is sweet as song. “I’m so - so  _ cold _ .”

“You have a very bad fever,” Olaf explains, slightly mocking. “Someone should take you to a hospital. Have you ever been to a hospital, girl?”

He is sure that, at some point in her life, Violet has visited a hospital. If not for herself, then for the births of her wretched siblings. The question doesn’t particularly matter, yet he gets the response he desires. Violet’s eyes slide all over him, hazy with confusion, and she doesn’t answer. Instead, she repeats, low, “I have a very bad fever.”

“That’s right, sugar. And I’m gonna help you cool off.” He tugs his hand out of Violet’s weak grasp, and moves to her hips, tugging the pajama bottoms down with a shimmy until she is left only in white cotton panties, covered in stark goosebumps, and fighting shivers.

When he tosses Violet’s clothes to the floor, his hands feel immediately empty. Before him, Violet is a chance for revenge he has never before considered. She is a prize, a gift, an opportunity. She is a punching bag. She is a line he could gleefully cross. 

She is a scared, sick young woman. 

He wants her to suffer either way.

“Don’t you recognize me, Violet?” Olaf asks, hands skimming up her legs, even though he is certain they have never met. Beneath his hands, her skin is smooth as a cut of silk. “Shouldn’t I get a big fat kiss?”

“You?” Violet warbles. Again, her eyes, dark as char, drift across his face.

“Me,” Olaf agrees. “The man of your dreams. Count Olaf. Surely you’ve heard of me?”

Violet frowns, squinting at the ceiling, obviously searching for a memory just out of reach. Still, Olaf pets her from the elastic of her panties down, taking his time. “Perhaps your silly mother warned you against me? Like a common boogeyman?”

“Olaf,” Violet murmurs, attempting a nod, though her head lolls. “Yes. You’re… bad.” Her eyes find his, a sparkle of delicious awareness in them. “And you’re here.”

“I’m right here,” he promises, taking one of her hands into his. “And I’m not gonna hurt you, honey. I’m gonna do the opposite. I’m gonna make you feel better, alright?”

“Help me?” Violet croaks. “I’m… cold. And thirsty. Water? Could you - ?”

“Hush, Violet. Let me.” He skims her hips yet again, relishing the feeling, and slips his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties, intent on tugging them away. Beneath him, Violet heaves softly. He watches her chest rise and catch with labored breathing. To her sides, her hands are open and unable to fight. 

It all feels so very wrong.

Olaf lets her go with a grunt of frustration. When he stands, he stares down at her, thinking of every nasty thing he could inflict upon her.

He could touch her. He could fuck her. He could carry her throughout the house, learning every secret she knows. His mind spins with these ideas and each end they might serve. An image lingers behind his eyes, stuck and snagging. It is of Violet slumped in bed as he tries his best to pleasure her in any way she might enjoy, yet she is too sick, too disoriented, too pained, and his efforts are useless and privately humiliating.

Olaf considers this, considers force, considers violence.

His thoughts spin to a stop, and the violence inside him is dead. He does not want to hurt her any more than he already must.

“Stay there,” Olaf growls through the grit of his heart in his throat. “I’ll be right back.”

He hurries downstairs, almost sorry. When he returns, Violet is just as he left her. Prone and beautiful and so very sick. He places a damp rag on her forehead and smoothes another over her face. He gathers her into his arms and lifts her, offering a glass of water which she sips desperately. He pets at her flushed face once she lies back down, and is disgusted by the clenched, anxious trembling of his body.

Once she is calm and cool, Violet’s eyes are steadier on him. 

“Count Olaf,” she mumbles, a tiny, teasing smile on her lips. “My hero.”

“No,” he hisses. “Not for much longer.”

There is a clock ticking softly at Violet’s cluttered desk. When he glances, Olaf sees that it is nearly ten, and knows that the opera must be nearly finished. His time is through. Already, he should have been long gone.

“Violet,” he says as he gathers her fallen bedclothes and kicks them into the doorway. “I am so sorry.”

He places her pinstripe pajamas at the top of the pile, and seeing them there nearly makes him sick. “But not sorry enough.”

The smell of lighter fluid erases the fog of sickness in the room. He dumps the entirety of one lighter atop the pile of fabric, then uses another to set it aflame. It takes immediately, with a small wave of heat that singes her hair at his knuckles. 

When he turns to see Violet, her eyes are only on him. Her face is soft with affection and relief. She has not noticed the blaze that will quickly devour her entire home. Olaf approaches slowly, gently, as if they have hours. He gathers her once more into his arms, and her face on his neck feels hot enough to brand. Violet is limp in his arms, though she still manages a smile once he places her back into bed and tucks her tightly into place with a heavy quilt.

“I’m sorry, Violet,” Olaf mutters again, giving into a compulsion and kissing her temple, her cheek, her hairline. He isn’t exactly sure what he apologizes for - for the fire, for his desire, for her mother, for their organization, for himself. He is sorry for all of it, and none of it.

“Where are you going?” Violet asks, looking suddenly stricken and devastated. Beside her, the flame has started to flicker and pop, crawling up the doorframe. “Won’t you take me with you?”

He does not answer. Instead, Olaf turns and crosses the room to her cracked window. When he steps into the night air, it is onto a dormer not far below. He shuts the window at his back as tight as he can manage.

Olaf’s fall to the ground knocks the wind from him, and still he limps desperately into darkness, gasping, gagging. He forgets his car parked a block away, stumbling directionless as far as he can, afraid beyond reason that he might hear her screaming.

Over the pop and crackle of flame and the ragged scrape of his breathing, Olaf hears Violet speaking softly instead.  _ “My hero. My hero. My - ” _

Smoke has blotted the stars from the sky.

Olaf feels no victory. 

*


End file.
